Tune and Tonehttps://tuneandtone.com
sound = musicFri, 18 Aug 2017 04:45:33 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/c5eab647bdb81642c8ac679d08fd2e08?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngTune and Tonehttps://tuneandtone.com
Creating an audio installation, part 2https://tuneandtone.com/2017/06/06/creating-an-audio-installation-part-2/
https://tuneandtone.com/2017/06/06/creating-an-audio-installation-part-2/#respondTue, 06 Jun 2017 18:33:26 +0000http://tuneandtone.com/?p=2425]]>Time has flown. How did it happen again? Many things have happened since my last post. One of the many things is that my interactive sound installation was selected for the exhibition at klingt gut! Sound Symposium in Hamburg, Germany.

The symposium opens in two days and I’m writing this blog post in an Airbnb room in the middle of Hamburg. The laptops in front of me have the installation running in a demo mode in preparation for the setup tomorrow.

The basic concept has stayed the same (read the previous post), but I have done some tweaking to the algorithms related to randomising how the sound clip will be played. It is an important part of of the experience for the visitors that they hear their voices before they leave the room, so I needed to make an algorithm that prioritises the most recent recordings. Not being a natural born programmer I had difficulties in figuring out how to create that, but luckily I mentioned the problem to a sound designer/artist Otso Sorvettula, who I met accidentially in Helsinki, and he sent me exactly the sub-patch I needed! Thanks, Otso!

Another step forward was to discover HOA Library, an open-source project where they have made super cool Ambisonic tools for several platforms including PureData. I had originally made my own simple first order encoders and decoders, which worked okay for my purposes, but after trying HOA elements I immediately fell in love with and the Cream GUI library that comes with them. They really help the artist to be creative while getting around the logic behind Ambisonics.

Even more important, however, was a test run with live people. For that I built the installation in a studio classroom at the school where I teach and invited students and colleagues to come and test it. That experience convinced me that the simple idea behind the installation works and I can attend the symposium without losing my face. The students were golden in trying different words, sentences, questions, opinions, languages and sounds into the microphone, listening to the evolving soundscape and suggesting ideas that would make the experience more interesting.

The demo run also gave valuable technical information on how I should set the randomisation values, what the mic gain and recording threshold levels should be, etc. The speaker setup in the demo was Quadrophonic, which was not nearly perfect in creating an immersive experience. However, at the symposium there will be a four-speaker setup, too, so it was necessary to test that. More speakers would be cool, but also much more difficult (expensive) to arrange.

This has been an interesting and educating side project in my career. Now let’s hope that the symposium visitors and contributors find their way into my installation and participate in the experience with open minds and ears!

]]>https://tuneandtone.com/2017/06/06/creating-an-audio-installation-part-2/feed/0matiasharju20170606_16252220170601_151456Creating an audio installation, part 1https://tuneandtone.com/2017/02/07/creating-an-audio-installation-part-1/
https://tuneandtone.com/2017/02/07/creating-an-audio-installation-part-1/#respondMon, 06 Feb 2017 22:46:43 +0000http://tuneandtone.com/?p=2072]]>“What happens in Vegas stays on Facebook” is a meme that couldn’t be more true nowadays. “Vegas” can be almost any public place in the physical world or every discussion forum on the Internet. In addition to Facebook, our opinions, words and actions will be recorded and stored in a number of places, data centres and private computers. Once we say something it will be archived forever, and you will never know when it will surface again – probably out of its original context.

From this (rather dystopian) setting I came up with an idea for an interactive audio installation that records everything people say when they visit the installation, and plays back the recorded clips in a random matter, repeating them and creating an ever-evolving soundbed of people’s thoughts and opinions. And of course people can make any sounds they wish, which will be even more fun. The soundbed keeps evolving as long as the installation is open for visitors and they dare to say something to the microphone. Once your words or sounds are recorded into the system there is no way of deleting them. (Well, of course it’s possible, but not for the public.) Only after the exhibition is over the recorded files would be erased.

From the idea I quickly moved into doing something about it. I decided to create the heart of the installation with Pure Data (Pd), which is an easy-to-learn data-flow programming language for audio. In addition to the computer running the Pd patch other components would be an audio interface, a microphone and a surround speaker array.

So far the programming has been fun and rewarding. Even though there are still many challenges and a lot of tweaking ahead, the basic functionalities are already there: recording triggered by input threshold, randomising the playback order of the recorded files, randomising their spatial positioning and movement, etc. Some features are still to added, such as dynamic automation for individual clips, look-aheads and volume envelopes to smoothen the starts of the recordings, a few effects and probably something more that I don’t know yet. It would be cool to apply some level of AI to make the experience more interactive, but at least for now my skills don’t reach that high.

Here’s a short video demonstrating the first tests of the randomised soundbed. Because I don’t like my own voice too much I invited some political celebrities into my studio…

Well, it sounds a bit chaotic, and for some reason the audio in the screen recording is in mono. But as said there is still a lot of tweaking to be done and the actual installation will use quite different sound material.

The installation will definitely require a surround speaker array to able the individual sound objects to travel around the listeners. All audio clips are positioned with horizontal and elevation angles onto a 360 degree sphere. There’s a simple Ambisonics encoder that creates B format (1st order) output which can be used if the exhibition space has a full-sphere Ambisonics system. If not, the system decodes the B format into several surround setups some of which I have already included in the patch. The next thing I will test is if a simple Quadrophonic or 4.0 speaker setup (four speakers in corners) is enough to create strong enough experience as that would be the easiest setup for most exhibition spaces.

So, next time I will hopefully report from inside the first practical test installation!

]]>https://tuneandtone.com/2017/02/07/creating-an-audio-installation-part-1/feed/0matiasharjuWords never forgotten Pd patch under development - screenshot.pngYes, you can use mobile phone as a sound recorderhttps://tuneandtone.com/2016/11/03/yes-you-can-use-mobile-phone-as-a-sound-recorder/
https://tuneandtone.com/2016/11/03/yes-you-can-use-mobile-phone-as-a-sound-recorder/#respondThu, 03 Nov 2016 18:14:06 +0000http://tuneandtone.com/?p=2057]]>Some time ago I wondered whether one can record anything usable on a mobile phone. The answer was yes, but my Samsung S4 mini’s internal noise gate ruined quiet recordings. The app I used for recording was (and still is) PVD Field Recorder, and soon after the blog post was published the developer of Field Recorder, Dr. Hartmut Pfitzinger, emailed me and told that it’s very easy to bypass the noise gate: by choosing a preset “StereoAGCoff” the noise gate is switched off. At the same time some other parameters are changed too, e.g. an EQ curve is activated for the input with a little bit of boost in low frequencies and attenuation in highs to give a little bit of warmth to the harsh sound of the Samsung’s mics and circuits.

Since then I’ve been using this preset setting whenever using the app for random recordings and it has worked fine, but haven’t had time to do any real testing. Until today, when I was sitting in my room, had some spare time to spend and did nothing but listened to the silence around. So I finally decided to test the “AGCoff” preset in action, I grabbed my cello and started to play some quiet passages.

Here’s a short recording of those notes. In this first clip I’m using PVD Field Recorder on the Samsung S4 mini with with the “StereoAGCoff” preset setting. (I did the recording in stereo, but decided to use only the right channel to match it to the reference track in the end of this post.)

As you can hear, no noise gate! The hiss stays constant and steady as it should. However there are those strange high snaps and clicks, which I haven’t noticed before. I don’t know what is causing them. I tested without the AGCoff preset, but they stay there. I tried with different sampling rates, but no difference. Maybe they are caused by some electric gadget in my room or a wifi router or something like that. Or maybe I’ve just dropped my phone too many times and now something has broken inside. I have to take a look at that later.

Back to the track: Now when the noise gate is not pumping the sound it’s easy to apply some noise reduction. For the second clip I ran the recording through iZotope RX5 and used quite mild settings in its Noise Reduction tool. I also used the De-clipping tool to get rid of those strange snaps.

Not bad. With another pass the hiss could be reduced much more if needed. The sound is still a bit harsh despite the pre-EQ, but with further EQ’ing some beauty could be carved out of the raw material.

So definately my phone is now becoming something useful. Of course the small smartphone in my pocket is still a mile apart from proper recording gear, but on the other hand I can’t make any phone calls or check the cutiest cat videos with my SoundDevice 702. And small phone is a brilliant tool for stealth recordings!

Finally, for a comparison here are the same notes recorded with an AT2035 large-diaphragm condenser mic into an RME Fireface UCX interface.

]]>https://tuneandtone.com/2016/11/03/yes-you-can-use-mobile-phone-as-a-sound-recorder/feed/0matiasharjuRecording anything usable on a mobile phone?https://tuneandtone.com/2016/03/25/recording-anything-usable-on-a-mobile-phone/
https://tuneandtone.com/2016/03/25/recording-anything-usable-on-a-mobile-phone/#respondFri, 25 Mar 2016 16:40:59 +0000http://tuneandtone.com/?p=1478]]>Okay, using mobile phone as an audio recorder is a classic topic, but I want to share my experience and an experiment. I’ve done many impromptu field recordings using just my “smartphone”, simply because it has often been the only gadget I’ve had with me at the time. And sometimes I’ve even deliberately chosen the phone instead of a proper digital recorder to be as stealthy as possible.

Everybody knows that the sound quality in these devices is far from perfect, but how far is it?

First I want to share a couple of recordings I’ve done with my Samsung S4 Mini. These clips were captured when we were living in Johannesburg a year ago and setting up a radio workshop there. The first one is from a soccer match with vuvuzelas and a lot of crowd shouting and celebrating when Kaizer Chiefs shoot a goal (and eventually smash the other local team Orlando Pirates). The recording clipped a few times – obviously – but I managed to smoothen the tops with iZotope RX software.

In the next clip a bunch of men are singing and drinking on Vilakazi Street (Nelson Mandela’s home street) in Soweto during a Saturday afternoon.

In these two examples we can agree that the tiny stereo mics of my phone managed to capture the moment. There is obvious hiss in the background, the tone is a bit metallic and you can sense a level of “impreciseness”. However, with some tweaking these clips could maybe be used as a part of an ambience track layering in a video or radio project.

I have also recorded live music performances with my mobile phone and sometimes they’ve turned out to sound surprisingly good. Sometimes not. Depends a lot of how loud the performance is, the texture of the music, the acoustics, etc. And the microphones don’t have a wind protection, so creative solutions are needed if recording in open spaces. Woolen stockings are always in fashion!

Previously I’ve been using the pre-installed recording app called Voice Recorder that comes with the Android phones. However, there are a few things that make that particular app a bit annoying to use: To choose between the two recording levels (high and low) you have to go the menu and swipe down to find the right tick box. The same applies if you want to switch between mono and stereo recording. There’s no limiter and no way of feeding the signal to headphones for monitoring. The recording format is fixed to MPEG-4 (.m4a) or AMR if you want to record in a lower 8 bit mode.

Recently I started to look for an app that solves the problems mentioned above and give some additional features such as PCM recording (.wav files). I found an app called PVD Field Recorder. The user interface looks like a handheld digital recorder and you can change many of the parameters by just tapping the main screen, which is convenient. The app records wav files among others and you can choose the sample rate all the way up to 96 kHz (although my phone is native in 44.1 kHz and can handle 48 kHz max). There’s a limiter, low cut filter (or actually a full eq), headphone monitoring (however with quite a long latency), adjustable pre-recording function, etc. Setting the recording level is still bit mysterious even in this super app or then I just haven’t figured out how it should work. Maybe the difficulty with recording levels has something to do with the Android operating system?

Equipped with this new app of mine I did some A/B testing to figure out how competent a recorder my Samsung phone actually is. I put the phone next to my Sony PCM-D100 and grabbed my old acoustic guitar. After recording a few chords I transferred the files to computer. The Samsung file was accidentally (?) recorded with perfect levels, so all I did was to gain up the D100 recording a little bit to reach the same overall volume (peaks at -3 dBFS).

First let’s listen to the D100 as a reference:

Ok. Not Abbey Road, but a good reference. Then let’s listen to what I found inside the Samsung:

Whoa! Quite harsh and metallic, I would say. But that’s what you would expect from those tiny microphones and even more microscopic (and cheap) electronic circuits. There’s also quite loud hiss, which is natural, too. Your average Zoom recorder is almost as noisy… (no offence). However, what was surprising and rather annoying to me is the noise gate or expander that cuts out the hiss and everything else whenever the incoming signal drops below certain point. And there’s no release delay; the noise gate reacts immediately. For some reason I haven’t noticed this feature before, but it really makes the recording sound unnatural. If you listen to the last guitar chord again pay attention to the loud hiss on top of the chord and notice how it disappears when the chord ends.

I had to try this once more. I whistled very softly to the Samsung to hear the noise gate activate. To hear it more clearly here I amplified the file about 20 dB. Take a listen:

As you can hear the noise gate/expander reacts to the volume of my whistling, but the result is not very beautiful. Here’s a screenshot of the iZotope RX waterfall display showing the phenomenon. Time goes from left to right and frequency from bottom up. The louder the sound is the brighter mark it leaves on the screen. The whistle is the horizontal line at about 700 Hz and its harmonics can be seen as fainter lines above that. The big orange bars are the internal hiss produced by the cellphone microphones and electric circuits. The low rumble (bright pikes at the bottom) is probably ambience noise, handling noises, maybe some internal interference etc.

So, as you can see and hear the Samsung’s noise gate/expander is really doing its job “well” in cutting all the incoming audio whenever the primary signal stops or fades away.

Unfortunately this is something I’d like to switch off. Because I want to hear the hiss constantly before and after the sounds and between them. Then I can get rid of it afterwards – if I want – by using the iZotope RX or any other software with a denoiser function. With denoiser I could just take a sample of the pure hiss without any other signal and then apply the denoising algorithm to the whole file. Now it’s much more difficult to separate the hiss from the original signal when they’re only heard simultaneously.

But there’s no way of switching off the noise gate in the recording apps I’ve used. And I doubt if it’s possible in any of the recording apps for Android.

However, the hiss issue can be tamed to some extent with proper tools and one can also create an EQ filter to try to soften the harsh overall sound. And that’s exactly what I did for this next clip. This is the same guitar recording from the Samsung after a little bit of noise reduction and EQ’ing. Feel free to compare with the previous clips and judge for yourself if it usable or not.

]]>https://tuneandtone.com/2016/03/25/recording-anything-usable-on-a-mobile-phone/feed/0matiasharjuScreen Shot 2016-03-25 at 16.57.49.pngSound Particles opening doorshttps://tuneandtone.com/2016/01/19/sound-particles/
https://tuneandtone.com/2016/01/19/sound-particles/#respondMon, 18 Jan 2016 22:18:50 +0000http://tuneandtone.com/?p=1336]]>I came across a software called Sound Particles on a sound design forum. It’s a cool 3D sound design tool that uses particle systems to generate sound atmospheres. What it means is that you can import several sound files from your sound library, then tell the software how they will appear in a virtual 3D environment around your virtual microphone(s), add some random qualities and after rendering you get a rich soundfield.

There have been other software using the same idea of particle systems, but Sound Particles seems very sleek and easy to use. I would imagine that it would be excellent for quickly creating big nature sounds such as storm approaching or birds flocking, but also unnatural experiences.

I’ve now been testing Sound Particles for a couple of times and there are a few attributes I don’t know how to set or if they even can be adjusted. For example even if I import 50 different sound files I get the same handful sounds repeated too often, which degrades the illusion of a huge mass of individual sounds. Well, there must be an adjustment for that, but so far I haven’t found it. And there’s no manual, only video tutorials! So, so far my results haven’t been very impressive, but this is something weird I managed to get out of the programme after a few attempts:

]]>https://tuneandtone.com/2016/01/19/sound-particles/feed/0matiasharjuClose miking bicycle tire on snowhttps://tuneandtone.com/2016/01/06/close-miking-bicycle-tire-on-snow/
https://tuneandtone.com/2016/01/06/close-miking-bicycle-tire-on-snow/#respondWed, 06 Jan 2016 16:44:03 +0000http://tuneandtone.com/?p=1111]]>I’m working on a project where I need lots of bicycle sounds. Being an enthusiastic cyclist myself I decided to start creating my own bicycle sound library for this and future projects. I own three bicycles and different sets of wheels and tires, so I think I’m ready to start sound collecting!

First on my shopping list are good and isolated tire sounds on different surfaces. To get a microphone close enough to the point where tire meets ground I first decided to use something like Super Clamp inspired by this Nathan Moody’s article. However, I couldn’t attach a Super Clamp onto the front fork without the clamp touching the spokes, so I used my old K&M mic holder instead. It has a long arm that made it possible to mount the holder up where there’s more space between the fork and the spokes and still get the mic close enough to the ground.

The microphone is Line Audio CM3, a super small and well-priced condenser with surprisingly good quality made in Rinkaby, Sweden. The mic is attached with a rubberband suspended holder. As I don’t own a Rycote Baby Ball Gag or a similar small windshield, I used a dead kitten from my pocket recorder and attached it with two safety pins.

As a bonus I decided to simultaneously record the rear hub, gear shiftings, etc as well, even though that wasn’t my priority. For that I used a another CM3 and a Super Clamp. However during the first test my shoe ankle hit the clamp, and next thing I noticed was that the microphone holder had broken and the mic had dropped somewhere between the spokes and the cassette. I don’t know what happened, but luckily the microphone didn’t break. For the actual test ride I attached the mic on the other side, but couldn’t find a place where it would have been out of the way of my shoe. So I had to keep my feet in an awkward position to avoid hitting the clamp.

It’s now winter in Finland where I live and even the capital Helsinki on the southern coast is covered with snow. So let’s start with snow sounds! I connected the mics into my SD702 and went out. Minus 20 Celsius made sure my first test ride was very compact in length! I rode on as many different surfaces as I could quickly find in my urban neighbourhood, but I think the most interesting was lawn covered with a few centimeters of snow.

And here’s an example of what I got:

I really like the rich snow sound. The close miking also works nicely and isolates the city ambience and traffic around. There was, however, a heavy resonance from the bicycle frame around 30 Hz, which caused strong rumbling sound all the way up to around 180 Hz. With a simple HPF I managed to clean that quite nicely, but that’s something I must take a look at for the next rides. Maybe get a better or an extra suspension system. Also the rim has its own ringing sound, so I might need to try mounting the tire on another kind of wheel.

Here’s an example from the rear mic:

This is a different part of the ride. First there’s some asphalt with sand on it, then gravel and finally I climb stairs on foot carrying the bike. I think the rear mic is not too useful for my use, as the hub and gears make quite soft sounds and the mic captures a lot of ambience instead. I believe with these details I’ll get better results in a studio environment.

To sum up, I think with slight improvements with the mic suspension the front rig works nicely. For my sound collecting purposes mono recordings are fine, but I might experiment with an MS rig using a CM3 and an ATE208 which I use with my shotgun mic. Not being a perfect combination that would however be easier to set up than an XY with two CM3’s. I’ll keep posting my results.

]]>https://tuneandtone.com/2016/01/06/close-miking-bicycle-tire-on-snow/feed/0matiasharjuFront mic with K&M holder.JPGK&M mic holder.JPGCM3 inside a dead kitten.JPGRear mic with Super Clamp.JPGA sound I heard: Heartbeats of a bridgehttps://tuneandtone.com/2015/11/29/a-sound-i-heard-heartbeats-of-a-bridge/
https://tuneandtone.com/2015/11/29/a-sound-i-heard-heartbeats-of-a-bridge/#respondSun, 29 Nov 2015 21:50:37 +0000http://tuneandtone.com/?p=1000]]>Near my home there’s an old concrete bridge from the 1960’s. The bridge is ugly and nearly collapsing due to some structural errors made back in the day, but it’s still in heavy use and an important traffic vein. When you walk under it you can hear the cars above driving over an expansion joint. Those etheric bumps sound like heartbeats of an urban city. Or perhaps – as there is no regular pattern – they are last struggling heartbeats of the dying bridge.

I recorded this in Mid/Side stereo with Rhøde NTG3 and Ambient ATE208 into Sound Devices 702.

]]>https://tuneandtone.com/2015/11/29/a-sound-i-heard-heartbeats-of-a-bridge/feed/0matiasharjuA Sound I Heard: Leaf Blowerhttps://tuneandtone.com/2015/10/23/a-sound-i-heard-today-leaf-blower/
https://tuneandtone.com/2015/10/23/a-sound-i-heard-today-leaf-blower/#respondFri, 23 Oct 2015 18:08:29 +0000http://tuneandtone.com/?p=109]]>I’m bad in writing diaries or blogs. That’s why I decided to make small remarks of my life and surroundings through sounds: simple “snapshot” recordings, some more prepared recordings, maybe something manipulated… sounds that are interesting in a way or another. I’ll try to post something every month, so let’s start.

A sure sign of Autumn is not only the colourful leafs but the noise pollution caused by leaf blowers. Luckily they are not as popular anymore as they used to be some years back, but one is enough to make you crazy.

Today when I went to work in the morning I passed one of these devil’s creations. It was amusing to watch the operator desperatily trying to get the leaves move to the direction he wanted. However, the noise was very irritating as usual: a tense, relatively high-pitched sound of a small two-stroke engine in the middle of a misty morning.

In the afternoon when I walked back another leaf blower was there in the same neighbourhood cleaning another sidewalk. The operator used the machine with short, repeating bursts of throttle. That made the sound even more irritating. I decided to take my Sony D-100 out of my backpack and capture the noise. For who knows if one day the leaf blowers are finally banned and demolished and the echo of their sound slowly dissolves from our memories. Then it’s assuring to know that whenever you want to mask those horrible sounds of rake and broom under your window, you can always open the leaf blower sound effect file and play it out loud!

]]>https://tuneandtone.com/2015/10/23/a-sound-i-heard-today-leaf-blower/feed/0matiasharjuFame: The baptism by fire for a new venuehttps://tuneandtone.com/2014/05/05/fame-the-baptism-of-fire-for-a-new/
https://tuneandtone.com/2014/05/05/fame-the-baptism-of-fire-for-a-new/#respondMon, 05 May 2014 11:48:00 +0000http://tuneandtone.com/?p=59]]>Rehearsing the curtain call and the last Fame song

Kallio Upper Secondary School – a high school in Helsinki with special task for performing arts, media and creativing writing – is currently showing Fame the musical. The venue for the show is school’s own main hall, which has been upgraded with new electric, lighting, sound and mechanic systems. Even though there have already been many different productions during the year, Fame is the ultimate baptism by fire for the venue. The technics are put to their limits. I will briefly go through the solutions made for the sound and the band.

The receivers for the wireless mics and the iDR-32 stage rack.

There are 35 actor-dancer-singers in the musical. Of these 17 are wearing a wireless microphone. Six microphones are swopped between actors and scenes. In addition to these three onstage instruments have a wireless transmitter.

To supplement school’s own wireless systems we managed to borrow equipment from the city school board and Sibelius-lukio, a nearby secondary school with a special task in music. The connectors in the old lavalier mics (AKG CK77 and C417) were changed in order to make them compatible with new transmitters. Thus they got a new life. We also managed to acquire skin-coloured, unobtrusive mics – either lavs or headsets – for almost all the actors.

The four installed receivers are connected to external antennas via antenna splitter. All the other receivers use their own, integrated antennas. That has worked surprisingly well despite of a few situations where actors move off the stage and outside the immediate coverage of the receivers. The building is very old and challenging in terms of positioning the equipment.

The venue’s mixing system is Allen&Heath iLive-T112 with stage rack iDR-32. In the iLive system the “brains” or the DSP engine is situated in the stage rack and the mixer is only a controller for the mixrack. Data travels through a pre-installed CAT5 cable. The 32 mic channels are in use to the last one.

Allen Heathin T-112 -mixing system has proven to be very handy in a musical environment.DCA’s and other channels can be assigned to any fader according to the scene and situation.

iLive has proven to be very handy in a musical production. The surface is relatively wide and 28 faders make it easy to handle big choir and band situations. Also the flexible nature of the channel strips – each channel strip can be assigned to any channel – has made the job easier. There are forty scenes programmed for the musical, even though different mixing situations count much more. Scenes are used mainly for channel mutes and some channel levels, but especially in singing scenes they are used to copy DCA groups and individual channels (e.g. background vocals and a soloist) onto the topmost channel layer. In that way it’s easy to find the most wanted channels instantly without the need to dig them from the other layers. It’s taken a lot of time to figure out the logics of the iLive environment and the different configurations of the scene programming, but the console has proven to be quite flexible.

The band leader/guitarist has a laptop in the “orchestra pit”. The laptop works as a secondary controller for the mixrack and with the iLive Editor the band can make their own monitor mixes. Each musician wears headphones and has an own monitor mix. This keeps the stage volume as low as possible and makes it possible for the band leader and drummer to use their talkback microphones to count-in the songs to the musicians’ headphones without the audience noticing. It’s also possible to talk to the musicians from the FOH and use this feature to – let’s say – thank them during the show after a good performance of a song!

“The pit” is located on the stage behind a black gauze. Notice the Yamaha DX7 on the keyboard stand; this is an 80’s musical after all! The drummer is safely locked behind a plexiglass.

The vocal monitoring is realised with three sidefills. They are used to feed a little bit of bass, guitar and keyboards for the singers. Also the vocal mics are very carefully fed to the monitors, but to avoid feedback the levels are low. Surprisingly nobody has yet ordered any more of their singing into the monitors, and let that be so. There are naturally quite hard EQ’s on feedback frequencies, but the feedback is not many desibels away especially when all the 17 mics are on at the same time. So far I haven’t managed to create any feedback apart from one time in the end of a song, but that started from the front speakers. Let’s hope the sonic scape will stay clean throughout the show week.

There are sidefills for the singers.Walkie talkies are used for communication between FOH and stage technician.

On the stage end there is one student working mainly with the wireless microphones, but he is also ready to fix technical problems when needed. There is a Clear-Com intercom system installed in the hall, bu as the stage technician needs to move a lot and the intercom is not wireless, we decided to use separete PMR walkie-talkies with headphones to communicate during the show.